Friday, December 9, 2011

Friday's Weekly Round-Up 53

[Allen Ginsberg - Presentation copy of Howl to Richard Eberhart - inscribed "For Richard Eberhart in gratitude for his original vision of Nature both in his poetry and in his early sympathy for mine, Allen Ginsberg Dartmouth, October 17, 1960" courtesy Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College ]

Top story this week. Dartmouth College Library's discovery of "arguably, the most important printed copy of "Howl" ever produced", a rare early mimeo (a true first printing, one of only twenty-five), gifted and inscribed to poet and scholar Richard Eberhart (now placed alongside a later signed City Lights first edition). For more on this important bibliographic discovery, see here.

"To Eberhart From Ginsberg..", Penmaen Press's 1976 edition of their critical correspondence is sadly out-of-print. Some copies, however, are available here.

The Daniel Radcliffe-Allen Ginsberg casting? - Interesting piece by David Wills this week in Beatdom on "Homophobia in the Media's Treatment of New Ginsberg Movie". Wills quotes the London newspaper, The Sun - "Potter's Dan Radcliffe to Play Gay Poet" (sic) - "The article", he notes, "focuses almost entirely on the fact that Radcliffe is playing a homosexual character, implying (that) there's something wrong with this...It mentions that Ginsberg was "openly gay" as though this is something we should be shocked by, and even sinks so low as to dredge up rumors that Radcliffe himself is gay".

And all this about the Allen role, what, we wonder, when they get around to it, will they be saying about the David Kammerer part?!

Also, another "gleaning from the blogs" this week, "Pierce Penniless"'s remarks on Allen's classic 1966 poem, "Iron Horse" (in the context of British policing and riot control!) - "The recently deployed portable steel barricades now used by police in London" (he informs us) "are called by their inventors the "Iron Horse" ...Unwittingly, though, it recalls a different "Iron Horse", the name Allen Ginsberg gave to a soldier-packed train he boarded in 1966, and to the poem he wrote about it".

"Iron Horse" has had a number of manifestations, not the least as part of an opera. A section of the Philip Glass setting of the poem may be listened to here.

Philip Glass makes it to this review via OWS action - this time at New York's Lincoln Center - Seth Colter Walls at The Awl has a full report.

Speaking of OWS, we've been meaning to draw your attention to this - OWS and meditation. Rick Heller proposes more "Mindfulness" in the movement and quotes Allen, "You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug" (that quote stumped us for a moment, but, of course, it's from his 1966 "Letter to The Wall Street Journal" (sic), and included in the 1996 collection, "Deliberate Prose").